Secador para casulos do bicho-da-seda: desenvolvimento, simulação e experimentação.

Abstract

The culture of the silkworm (sériciculture) is an activity in development in all the world generating job, agricultural financial support and commercial exchange. Shell, chrysalis and booty constitute the cocoon produced by Bombix mori L. The shell is composed of fibroin and sericin. The cocoon has high initial moisture content (68 - 70% w. b.) and a the chrysalis has a low life cycle (4-5 days after harvested). Then, it needs to be submitted to the drying process and to be stored at low moisture content (10 - 12% d. b.) and after it needs to be marketed to produce silk yarns, which are used on the manufacturing of high cost products. In this sense, the goal of this work is to design, to make and to test a cross flow band conveyon dryer and to simulate silk worm cocoon drying. Building and working aspect of the dryer and mathematical modeling to describe heat and mans transfer between air and product inside the dryer are reported. The mathematical equation are solved numerically using the finite volume method. Results of the performance of the experimental dryer and cocoon drying (simulated) are presented and analyzed. From the results it was verified that during of the drying process, the moisture content of the cocoon depends strongly of the air temperature, slightly of the cocoon layer thinkness and it is almost affected by air flow rate. The following advantages of the dryer can be cited versatility, low costoff the building, many easy to pieces, good mobility and electronic control of the wire net.